Piled into the three person taxi with Karen and Barbara today. Arrived a good fifteen minutes before the others. It keeps raining/misting here so investing in an umbrella is sounding like an excellent idea as the days keep threatening rain. We started out today with a cultural lesson. Vietnamese people are very touchy, are a high context culture (they believe you know things, even when you have no way of knowing them. America is a low context culture, we provide details to make sure you know everything), and they avoid eye contact most of the time. It explains a lot about when we first met them. Since Americans normally don't like much physical contact (Donna and I almost hate it) we tested out some of the lower levels of Vietnamese contact. It was really awkward to even stand there holding hands for a few seconds or to put our arms around each other.
Got Papa Duck to pay for lunch. Lilith and I ordered the same thing but she couldn't eat it because her chopsticks had too much wood peeling off. She was hinting that people should switch chopsticks with her even though we were short on utensils already. Drexler decided to mime an evil beast stealing people's food which Barbara did not approve of. Been having a craving for ice cream the past few days but didn't order any for lunch so Donna and I went to find some somewhere else. Instead of getting a scoop I was given a packaged cone. Helped dull the craving, but satisfaction was unattained. Most of the way there we were stuck behind this group who freaked out a bit when they realized there was foreigners behind them. Then they started staring at us. I am going to start waving at people when they unabashedly stare from now on. Not very Vietnamese, but it breaks the awkward ice.
More language class. Today went better since she just focused on numbers for two hours. Better, but not smooth. She started out the lesson by teaching to say where we came from, then gave us a quiz on what we had learned yesterday and during the last five minutes. Deanna and I spent most of our time staring at it. Everything was in Vietnamese and most of us filled out the example problem because of this. The main problem is the teacher doesn't speak much English. She wasn't much better today so I will be heavily relying on help from my host sister to pass this final. Lilith actually passed out multiple times during class. Contemplated throwing my bag of tissues at her. I had almost fallen asleep during the morning lecture but had chugged some coffee and asked plenty of questions to make up for it. She was out cold for about fifteen minutes. Maybe I should do a "how many times does Lilith fall asleep in random places count".
Our taxi ride back was awful. The driver took the scenic route (which is over an hour in the traffic at the time) which is longer than the regular route - and ran the meter for longer. A hundred thousand dong more (don't look shocked, it's 20,000 dong to a dollar) which Drexler wasn't about to pay and led to a show down in the lobby of the hotel. The Drexler's are learning Vietnamese with us because they don't know any and the hotel staff had to be a translator and middle man. From what I saw the hotel worker said to pay him and he did.
Donna and I went to an Indian restaurant for dinner. Walked in and there were the Drexlers and Alessa. We decided to sit upstairs so things wouldn't get awkward. They use more tomatoes in the Indian dishes here than at home. My butter chicken was more like chicken tomato soup. Finally got some real ice cream, savored every bite. Since there are no mosquitoes here I can eat as much sugar as I feel like as long as I don't mind the weight gain and acne.
A while after getting back Deanna came in for some ranting time. She had gone off with Alessa and Karen during lunch. Alessa took this opportunity to talk. And talk. And talk and talk. Her main subject seemed to be her hunt for white, heelless boots to finish one of her costumes. Donna said that's like the holy grail of boots.
I've decided to count how many times people take pictures with/of me. A bit selfish since Deanna and Karen have gotten stopped multiple times already but this will be easier to track.
Pictures taken: 1 A student stopped Donna and I and asked to take a couple pictures for her video. Not sure if this should count as one photo encounter or three separate photos.
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